Rich Helms

Rich Helms

Rich is a seasoned software developer with over 30 years of experience in computer Research and Development (R&D). He spent 22 years in various positions at IBM and two years as the Vice President of R&D for Electronics Workbench in Toronto. From 2000 to 2009, Rich owned and managed Rume Interactive Canada, which was sold to Verisk in 2009 and rebranded as Enabl-u Technologies and then Verisk Crime Analytics Canada. Rich ran the Canadian operation since the transfer of ownership until his retirement.

His credentials range from deep technical work (five patents in hardware and software) to running R&D. Former chair IBM Microelectronics Canada Lab Patent Review Board. Rich has created five generations of eLearning platforms. Designed and wrote full-text search engine including crawling support for large-scale case management system. In 2010 co-authored “Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide” for Packt Publishing.

“It’s never been done” is a call to action for Rich. He has built a career on breaking new grounds in the computer field. In 1986 he developed CARES (Computer Assisted Recovery Enhancement System) for the Metropolitan Toronto Police. CARES was the first computer system in the world for aging missing children.